By G. de Purucker

In all the ancient religions possessing an esoteric* or mystical
side, there are teachings or suggestions centering on the one
thought that somewhere in the world there exists a spiritual energy
or intelligence, who is mankind's guardian and friend. He is often
alluded to as the Chief of the adept-seers of the ages, who is
intimately connected with the spiritual principles which guide
and inspirit the universe. H.P.B. speaks of this mysterious individual
as the Great Initiator.

[*Every Orientalist knows that after the passing of the Buddha
there gradually arose a number of schools which after one or two
centuries became grouped under two main heads of philosophical
thought: the Hinayana and the Mahayana. The different Mahayana
schools of northern Buddhism are all highly philosophic, but the
mystical element predominates. In the Hinayana system of southern
Asia, the technical philosophical element is dominant, but to
those who know how to read its writings the rather closely veiled
mystical thought and even esoteric wisdom in them become apparent
enough. It has been stated by the greatest of the Mahayana teachers
that the Hinayana represents the 'eye doctrine' of the Lord Buddha,
whereas the Mahayana system and its writings comprise the esoteric
teachings originally given by the Buddha to his arhats and later
elaborated by them and their descendants, and hence these teachings
are called his 'heart doctrine' -- mystically signifying the hid
essence of the Buddha's inner thought.

Both these schools, however, have more or less crystallized into
formalisms. Certain branches of the Mahayana school have become
largely intermixed with tantrika ideas and symbols, and the followers
of two or three of these sects actually teach to a certain extent
the magic of the 'left hand.' Thus if we desire to gain a clear
picture of the fullness of the Buddha's teaching, in so far as
it has reached our own times, we should conjoin the mystical esotericism
of the original Mahayana with the teaching of the Hinayana, the
former elucidating the latter.

There were a number of really great men who initially built up
the structure of the Mahayana system considered as a whole; they
were high initiates who gave out as much of the genuinely esoteric
Buddhism as they could in the times in which they taught, or as
they were allowed to do by the Mahachohan whose representatives
for this special work they were. Two such were Nagarjuna and Aryasangha,
generally looked upon today by adherents of the Mahayana as having
been bodhisattvas.

Nagarjuna was the founder of the Madhyamika school -- meaning
the Middle Way; whereas Aryasangha, the one who was a direct disciple
of Gautama the Buddha himself, was the founder of the original
or primitive Yogachara school. Now both these schools as they
now exist contain a large amount of tantrika teaching, and therefore
have greatly degenerated. The student may be interested to read
what H.P.B. says in her Theosophical Glossary under
the head, "Aryasangha."

The Sanskrit terms Mahayana and Hinayana mean, respectively, great
vehicle or path, and defective vehicle or path, yana having
the double significance of vehicle, and way or manner of going.
Maha means great; but the idea in the word hina,
defective, is not that of error but of a partial explanation only.
This is precisely what the Mahayanists say: that the Hinayana
system is true as far as it goes, but that it is defective or
imperfect because incomplete. In one way of looking at the matter,
one may say that the Hinayana is the exoteric or incomplete teaching
of the Buddha Gautama, while the inner or secret meaning of the
Mahayana is the full or complete teaching that the Buddha gave
to his arhats and chosen disciples.

So large a part of H.P.B.'s writings contains frequent allusions
to them, especially to the Mahayana, that it has not been uncommon
for many to imagine that theosophy is a kind of esoteric Buddhism
only, instead of being the ancient cosmic wisdom of the gods,
of which the teachings of Gautama the Buddha are but an interpretation.
I might add that, while H.P.B. was a formal Buddhist herself for
reasons of her own, she was not in her teachings a Buddhist
in the sectarian sense of the word.]

Now, to refer to this individual as Gautama the Buddha would in
a sense be quite correct, because the spiritual influence of the
Great Initiator was there; and yet, to look upon this individual
merely as a human being is to wander wide from the truth. His
ray, a part of his intelligence, on certain occasions, rare and
far between in a great root-race, appears as a buddha in a human
body. But the buddha is not the mere physical man, who is only
the outward garment and the channel through whom the light and
the teaching come. The real buddha is an inner entity (though
not exactly the spiritual entity within each man), which serves
as a channel through which stream the influences, the will power,
the intelligence, of some being still more sublime -- the Great
Initiator.

Gautama the Buddha was a man. He is at present a nirmanakaya.
The higher ego of the entity which last manifested itself as Gautama
the Buddha works through this nirmanakaya; and this higher ego
is the Buddha, the transmitter of the spiritual intelligence of
the Great Initiator.

It is to Gautama the Buddha, thus considered, and the power working
through him, that the teachers of H.P.B. referred when they used
phrases such as "He to whom we owe allegiance," "He
whose word is our Law." As one of the two racial Buddhas
of our fifth root-race -- the second Buddha being Maitreya, still
to come millions of years hence -- he will continue to watch over
and protect this root-race. He is the origin, the founder, of
every great spiritual religious or philosophical movement begun
at any time during our root-race. It is he who is the Chief of
all the adepts, the Lord, the Chohan; and it is before him, and
in his presence, that the seventh and greatest initiation of all
takes place."*

[*Many of the greatest figures in ancient Hindu mythology and
history are stated to have been 'born' in either the Surya-vansa
or the Chandra-vansa, meaning respectively 'solar race' and 'lunar
race.' Now these 'races' are two family lineages, the Surya-vansa
being a line of kshattriyas originally springing from Ikshwaku,
son of the Manu Vaivaswata, who was son of Vivaswat the sun; and
the other line, the Chandra-vansa, originally claiming descent
from the moon, itself descended from the Rishi Atri. The great
epic figure Rama was born in the Surya-vansa; and Krishna as well
as the Buddha Gautama were born in the Chandra-vansa.

The only point of importance in this somewhat sectarian mythological
system is that these two 'races' really represent two different
schools of archaic esotericism. The teaching which characterized
the solar race was conservative, enfolding the wisdom of past
ages and applying this without any noteworthy modifications to
the conditions of the current period; whereas that of the Chandra-vansa
was rather a carving out of 'newer' methods, in addition to the
holding of the wisdom of ancient times. The moon in this connection
is not the moon of sorcery and black magic, but is a reference
to the mystical fact that every neophyte, in his progress along
his path, must cultivate and raise the 'lunar element' in himself
to become at one with the inner god; in other words, to evolve
the human monad into becoming its own divine monad.]

On account of his connection with the avatara Jesus, the Buddha
was closely associated with the founding of Christianity. Through
infinite compassion, he lent himself to the work of the avatara
Jesus, thereby linking himself inevitably and forever with the
karma that flowed forth from it; but that does not mean that all
the evil that has been wrought, and such good as has been done,
by Christians and the Church since the passing of Jesus, fall
with dead weight upon Gautama the Buddha. This would simply be
voicing the old theological and utterly mistaken interpretation
of the doctrine of vicarious atonement. The karmic law will call
to account the evil workers themselves.

This is what is meant: Gautama the Buddha, the noblest sage who
has lived within millions of years, even he, with his godlike
wisdom, made minor mistakes in his life. In his spiritual yearning
to give truth, light, love and peace to men, on several occasions
he opened the doors a little too widely. Therein lies always a
great psychical and spiritual danger. In order to correct what
he had overdone, he became the intermediate part of the avatara
Jesus (just as he had some hundreds of years earlier provided
the intermediate part of the avatara Sankaracharya), thereby to
a certain extent rectifying what he, Gautama the Buddha, in his
boundless love for mankind, had done.

In Gautama Sakyamuni, as a man, there were several different elements
functioning: (a) the ordinary individual who was a great and splendid
man; (b) inspiring him was the incarnate bodhisattva, although
the manasaputric essence, belonging to that grand human being
as a monad per se, had not yet been fully awakened; (c) enlightening
this bodhisattva within Gautama was the buddha; and (d) inspiring
and enlightening that buddha -- a spiritual flame working through
the bodhisattva in the man -- was the dhyani-buddha of our round,
working of course through the dhyani-bodhisattva of this globe
D.

All this may seem very complicated, but it really is not. We have,
first, a spiritually evolved human being in whom the native manasaputric
essence was partially awakened, thus providing a field of consciousness
for its individualization as the incarnate bodhisattva. Then the
monadic essence working through this incarnate bodhisattva was
individualized as the buddha, these elements forming the various
monadic centers mainly active in Sakyamuni. In addition to this,
and because the incarnate bodhisattva allowed the ray from the
inner buddha to manifest itself, there was the reception even
into the human consciousness of the still more spiritual ray from
the fourth-round dhyani-buddha, in its turn traveling to the human
buddha by means of the globe dhyani-bodhisattva.

This dhyani-buddha might be described as the 'outside' spiritual
influence working through the human buddha; and the buddha and
the bodhisattva and the partially awakened manasaputric essence
form the triad in the constitution of Gautama Sakyamuni acting
to produce the manushya-buddha.

When Gautama, whose personal name was Siddhartha, left his home,
according to the beautiful story, and went out in search of light,
in order to attain human buddhahood for the sake of the "salvation
of gods and men," he brought first into relatively full activity
the bodhisattva within himself. The ordinary man, grand as he
was, nevertheless was utterly subordinated to the bodhisattva
within him, which could then manifest and express its noble faculties,
enlightened by the buddhic ray. Yet this becoming at one with
his inner buddha was still not enough for the purpose in mind,
because this particular human incarnation of the man called Siddhartha
was to be the vehicle of the minor racial buddha, who would watch
over our fifth root-race. In the exoteric literatures of Buddhism
it is stated that every human or manushya-buddha, such as was
Gautama, is the counterpart on earth of a celestial buddha, its
spiritual-divine origin. It is the celestial buddha, the dhyani-buddha,
who sends forth from himself the ray, the energy, the spirituality,
the will, the intelligence, all of which, manifesting through
the spiritual-human vehicle, produce the manushya-buddha.

It is also the Buddha who, during his entire administration which
lasts from the beginning of the fifth root-race until the Maitreya-buddha
succeeds him, helps to bring about the appearance of an avatara
at certain cyclical periods. The reason for this is that a divinity
requires a psychological apparatus as pure and strong as that
of a buddha for its manifestation. In fact, the energy emanating
from a divinity would probably wreck the psychological apparatus
of an average mahatma, although he is far above the general run
of mankind. There are great mysteries involved in this question
of buddhahood.

Even in physical appearance, when the Lord Buddha manifested as
Gautama, he was very different from other men. Not only did he
radiate kindness, love, disciplined strength, peace, and brilliant
intellectuality, but, it is said, he was almost unhumanly handsome
and looked like a god; and yet his son, born before buddhahood
was consciously attained, was but a fourth rounder, although a
good and noble man. Rahula was his name.

The incarnation of a buddha is not a descent from devachan as
is the case with ordinary men. Every human being is a compounded
entity. There is a god in him, a spiritual ego, a human ego, an
animal nature, and the physical body which expresses as best it
can the bundle of energies surging through and from within the
auric egg. Now each of these elements is itself a learning entity
on its upward way. The self-consciousness, the sense of egoity,
is there; but above that is the sense of cosmic unity, which is
the atmosphere and consciousness of the inner god, a celestial
buddha. Hence, as there are in a man a celestial buddha, a human
buddha, a human soul working through an animal body, it is apparent
that many strange things may take place if circumstances are right,
and that the conditions of incarnation of a buddha must de
facto be very different indeed from the reincarnation of
an ordinary man. And so it was in the case of Sakyamuni.

The Prince Siddhartha of Kapilavastu, who later became the physical
vehicle of a buddha, was a spiritually evolved human being, and
therefore a fit vehicle to express the higher element in his nature,
the manushya-buddha, itself the vehicle of the celestial buddha
-- the loftiest part of such an exalted constitution. Hence the
man was born, passed through all the usual phases, but because
he was overshadowed by the buddhic splendor, he was a wonder-child.
He married. Rahula was born. A little later came the first inner
light of dazzling splendor. Understanding began to come to the
human part of this compounded entity, and then the manushya-buddha
took control. The human thereafter was subordinated to the spiritual;
and Prince Siddhartha left his home and became a wanderer -- which
merely means that he withdrew from the world, so that the human
part of him might be trained to become a fully conscious channel
for the manifestation of the manushya-buddha within.

So it was that finally, after striving in self-imposed discipline
and spiritual yearning and inner conquest, under the sacred Bodhi
tree, the wisdom-tree, the full illumination came, as the legend
runs, and the manushya-bodhisattva called Gautama Sakyamuni attained
buddhahood. This incarnate bodhisattva became the willing and
perfect psychospiritual instrument through which his inner buddha
could express itself. When the buddha-state had been attained,
we find the buddha working through the bodhisattva, which itself
works through the awakened man; thus exemplifying the activity
of the three higher monads in a human constitution: to wit, the
spiritual, the bodhisattva or manasaputra, and the evolved human.
And this is exactly what each one of us someday will have the
lofty privilege and joy of becoming -- provided that we run the
race successfully.

Until eighty years of age the Buddha lived and taught: initiated,
helped, comforted, inspired. When the body which had served him
so well became feeble with the passing of the years, the Buddha
'died' -- according to the exoteric teaching.*

[*Certain passages in the Maha-Paranirvana-Sutra briefly
give a very important teaching regarding death, by applying the
process by which it takes place to the passing on of the Buddha-Gautama
himself, as a type-figure. They speak of this process as the 'ascent'
of the Buddha's consciousness through several planes, and of its
'descent' again, and this three times in succession. Now physical
death takes place in all human beings in exactly the same fashion,
although in the case of the great sages this is modified by their
high spiritual standing.

The higher portions of the human constitution do not break away
from the physical body with one single wrench of the golden cord,
but this is preceded by a rising of the consciousness into the
higher planes of man's constitution, a momentary pause there,
then a descent till the consciousness reanimates the physical
brain for a few seconds, and at this instant the eyes may open
for a moment or two. Then the consciousness ascends once more
and, after another brief pause, is again drawn back into the entangling
attractions of the astral and physical worlds, and again perhaps
for a fleeting instant the physical brain becomes momentarily
conscious. Then for a third time the consciousness ascends, but
more strongly now, and after another short interval it descends
again, but very weakly this time, the consciousness perhaps registering
a feeble contact with the physical plane; and after a very brief
span, unconsciousness, complete and utter, supervenes: the golden
cord of vitality is snapped, and the inner man is free. The ante-mortem
panorama immediately precedes the period of the first ascent.]

The truth of the matter is that at that time the buddha within
Gautama Sakyamuni entered into the nirvanic condition, leaving
the bodhisattva still active and working through the aged physical
frame. Nirvana, in this case, really meant that the celestial
buddha entered into its native cosmic realms, its work for the
time being ended, and left behind the human illuminated by the
manushya-buddha splendor, the inner buddha. The buddha-part of
him had 'died' for the world, i.e. had done its work and had passed
into the nirvana, therein to await its succeeding task at the
end of this fifth root-race, when that same buddha-spirit will
again enlighten a new bodhisattva-man.

For twenty years after the nirvana was attained, Gautama the Buddha
lived among his initiates, and taught and initiated; and at the
age of one hundred, his body finally died. The body was cast off,
and the entire entity as a manushya-buddha remained as a nirmanakaya,*
and so lives today, the channel, the vehicle, through which pour
energies deriving from the spiritual center of our solar system.
Hence he is the channel of the Great Initiator, the guardian and
protector of every great world religion or world philosophy founded
during our fifth root-race, and will continue so to be and to
act until the Buddha-Maitreya comes in the course of the cycling
ages.

[*A nirmanakaya can live in any vehicle that he may choose to
form by his will and thought; and similarly he has the power and
the wisdom to choose the inner plane or planes on which to live.
In all cases, however, the 'body' of the nirmanakaya is formed
from his own auric egg; that is, the process of forming such thought-
and will-body amounts to a temporary thickening by kriyasakti
of the outer layers of the adept's auric egg; such 'body' being
formed to correspond in quality and attribute with the inner plane
that is chosen as the 'world' in which the nirmanakaya dwells.

Every nirmanakaya is a mahatma, minus the lower triad; but not
every mahatma is a nirmanakaya. There are mahatmas who are incarnated;
and, obviously, because living in the physical-astral-vital vehicle,
they are not nirmanakayas. Some of the mahatmas of the lower degrees
have not yet reached the point in their evolution where they find
it advantageous to their sublime work to drop the lower triad
of their constitution and to live as nirmanakayas.]

The difference between this great sage and ordinary men is that
in Sakyamuni the higher parts of his constitution were more or
less fully working through the 'man,' at least as fully as is
possible for any human being who is a sixth rounder. When he had
undergone his sixth sublime initiation, from that moment as a
'man' he 'died,' but continued to live on. In other words, he
taught after this episode for twenty years in and through the
initiated and therefore glorified human part of his constitution;
but no man can undergo the sixth initiation, which is the time
of the Great Renunciation -- much less the seventh -- and 'return'
to the world of men as he was before. (In order
to understand the esoteric meaning of what the nirvana of Gautama
the Buddha really was, we must remember that there are nirvanas
of different kinds and of different grades of sublimity. In renouncing
nirvana, the choice was made by the human part, the bodhisattva
on its way to becoming a buddha in the future. But the highest
part of the Buddha must enter nirvana, it cannot recede; it has
gone beyond the point of spiritual existence where a choice to
remain behind is possible. This explains the exoteric teaching
that the Buddha enters nirvana from which there is no return for
the highest part that does enter nirvana; whereas the real teaching
is that the human soul of the Buddha, the bodhisattva, is the
part which makes the great renunciation and turns back in the
spirit of compassion to help all that lives.)

The meaning therefore is that the higher part of his constitution,
to wit, the human ego within him, had now re-become a buddha and
had entered a nirvana; but the lower part of his human or intermediate
nature still functioned on earth as a glorious bodhisattva --
in this grand and beautiful fact we see the meaning of many exoteric
Buddhist statements that a buddha leaves a bodhisattva behind
in order to carry on the work. So then, to be a buddha means that
one's highest part is in the nirvana, and that one's higher human
part, which is buddhi-manasic, lives on as a teacher, as a bodhisattva-nirmanakaya.
Then there is the physical body with its vital-astral apparatus
which finally dies.

Now Sakyamuni, upon attaining buddhahood at and during his sixth
initiation, re-entered a nirvana. This could be otherwise phrased
by saying that the spiritual monad within him entered or became
a dharmakaya, whose consciousness is nirvanic and too pure and
loftily spiritual to permit any contact with our gross spheres
of life and matter. All the remainder of the constitution of the
Buddha then and there, after such initiation, chose to enter the
nirmanakaya condition; while that part of Sakyamuni's constitution
which was intermediate between the spiritual monad and the higher
portions of the human ego, went into abeyance as the sambhogakaya,
i.e. non-manifesting because not 'chosen.'

The important point of teaching here is that certain highly spiritual
human beings who undergo successfully the sixth initiation choose
the sambhogakaya instead of the nirmanakaya, as for instance the
Pratyeka Buddhas, for in their case the highest part of their
constitution becomes the dharmakaya, all the higher intermediate
portions become the sambhogakaya; the nirmanakaya 'choice' is
not made, and thus in their isolation these pure but spiritually
selfish individuals lose all contact with the world and its forces,
and all desire to help those less advanced.

After the Buddha's physical death at the ripe old age of one hundred
years, the bodhisattva, who was really the now enlightened Siddhartha,
remained, as said, in the earth's atmosphere as a nirmanakaya,
that is to say, a complete but glorified man in the full possession
of all faculties, characteristics and principles of his constitution,
except the physical body, with the linga-sarira and grosser pranas.

The expression 'in the earth's atmosphere' is correct as far as
it goes, but it is incomplete. One could state the situation with
even greater accuracy by saying that the bodhisattva as a nirmanakaya
withdrew from ordinary physical contact with men and the earth
and its affairs, but maintained intimate and watchful and overseeing
relations with them from inner planes -- the bodhisattva-nirmanakaya,
formerly known on earth as Sakyamuni, being a resident of that
extremely mysterious part of the earth's surface, protected and
guarded against outer intrusion, wherein are found some of the
greatest members of the occult Brotherhood, Sambhala.